The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 17, 2026
Filed:
Jan. 19, 2023
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
The present disclosure provides systems and methods for enabling packet path tracing (PT) in large diameter networks that would otherwise exceed a hop limit imposed by hardware edit-depth limitations. Upon determining that a Midpoint Compressed Data (MCD) stack of a packet header is full, a PT Encapsulation and Copy (PEC) enabled midpoint node can apply an encapsulation protocol that generates a new header grouping that encapsulates a previous header grouping therein, copies information from the previous header grouping into the new header grouping, and adds a new MCD stack to the packet header for further population of path tracing data and to ensure that the packet remains along the intended path. The encapsulation protocol ensures that the new header grouping remains within the edit-depth of each midpoint node encountered by the packet. The path tracing information can be combined at a controller resulting in full path information for the packet.